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This conference aims to outline the different linguistic operations of identification that involve the construction of identity and the different linguistic devices through which the identity of a person or object is constructed.

The world's languages use diverse means to construct and express the identity of people and objects. These means include denomination (e.g. proper nouns, noun phrases, denominal adjectives, etc.) in the sense of categorising living beings and/or inanimate objects through the act of naming, and reduplication (e.g. a salad salad, I mean up-up, etc.) which in some of its uses amounts to typifying. Categorisation is a way of identifying an element with a group while marking its singularity (see e.g. Folkbiology). On the other hand, to produce a sequence like 'un parfum pour les femmes femmes' is tantamount to setting up a subcategory of women par excellence and consequently, introducing a difference among women.

In recent years, identification has received a great deal of attention in linguistics. In some theoretical models it has even come to be regarded as a form of linguistic operation.

The aim of this conference is to outline the different linguistic operations of identification insofar as they involve the construction of identity and the different linguistic devices through which the identity of a person or object is constructed.

We welcome contributions that show how the two notions of identity and identification are articulated in both language and discourse. Contributions can stem from any theoretical background, be based upon any methodological approach and address the issue in any of the world's languages.

Languages

The conference will feature presentations in French as well as in English.

Abstracts

Please submit your abstracts in both RTF and PDF (2 pages minimum and 3 max, in 12-point Times New Roman, simple spacing) by e-mail to the following address: langrepuniv-tours.fr no later than 31 May 2007, submission deadline. Please include the title of the paper but do not mention the name of the author as abstracts will be refereed anonymously. A separate page should contain the title of the paper, the author's name, affiliation, postal and email addresses.

Publications

We intend to publish the papers accepted for the conference. To this effect, revised versions will be reviewed anew by the members of the scientific committee.

This workshop provides a forum for researchers to present and discuss theories and methods for semantic content acquisition and representation. Participants will also be encouraged to apply their methods, or relate their theories, to a specific test corpus. In this workshop, the relevance of an approach to meaning is judged only by what it can tell us about real language data.

Text (and language in general) has aboutness; it has meaning, or semantic content. We as (computational) linguists are highly adept at dissecting text on a number of different levels: we can perform grammatical analysis of the words in the text, we can detect animacy and salience, we can do syntactic analysis and build parse trees of partial and whole sentences, and we can even identify and track topics throughout the text. However, we are comparatively inept when it comes to identifying the semantic content, or meaning, of the text. Or, to put matters in more concise terms, even though there are theories and methods that claim to accomplish this, there is a striking lack of consensus regarding both acquisition, representation, and practical utility of semantic content.

The aim of this workshop is not only to provide a forum for researchers to present and discuss theories and methods for semantic content acquisition and representation. The aim is also to discuss a common evaluation methodology whereby different approaches can be adequately compared. As a first step in this direction, participants will be encouraged to apply their methods, or relate their theories, to a specific test corpus that will be available in several of the Nordic languages and English. Participants will be expected to demonstrate what kind of results their methods can yield. In this workshop, the relevance of an approach to meaning is judged only by what it can tell us about real language data. The overall purpose of this workshop is thus to put theories and models into action.

Questions of interest include:

- Is there a place in linguistic theory for a situation- and speaker-independent semantic model beyond syntactic models?

- What are the borders, if any, between morphosyntax, lexicon and pragmatics on the one hand and semantic models on the other?

- Are explicit semantic models necessary, useful or desirable? (Or should they be incidental to morphosyntactic and lexical analysis on the one hand and pragmatic discourse analysis on the other?)

Online submission is now open at http://www.easychair.org/SCAR2007/. Submissions should not exceed 8 pages, and should use the ACL style files available at http://ufal.mff.cuni.cz/acl2007/styles/. Since reviewing will be blind, papers should not include the authors' names and affiliations, and self-references should be avoided. Proceedings will be published electronically.

Important dates:

Submission deadline: March 26 Notification of acceptance: April 26 Final papers due: May 7 Workshop: May 24